


lost and found

by thegirl



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Alternate Origin Story, Alternate Universe - Crack, Gen, Ned Stark's Bastard
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-01-10
Updated: 2015-01-10
Packaged: 2018-03-06 23:54:23
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 702
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3153014
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thegirl/pseuds/thegirl
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>From celiatully's headcanon: Imagine a canon in which Ned Stark got hit too many times in the head while fighting Arthur Dayne and found an abandoned child by the side of the road who was of absolutely no relation to him and assumed it was his son.</p>
<p>Original post can be found here: http://celiatully.tumblr.com/post/75539334703/crossingwinter-imagine-a-canon-in-which-ned</p>
            </blockquote>





	lost and found

**Author's Note:**

  * For [crossingwinter](https://archiveofourown.org/users/crossingwinter/gifts).



> All the credit for this idea goes to celiatully aka crossingwinter. I couldn't stop myself. Sorry if it's already been written up by someone else, I just fell in love with it.

Howland has always considered Ned to be a sensible, rational person who made good decisions and didn’t jump into things. It is, of course, important to consider that Ned has just watched his sister die.

Howland has no sisters, but Ned’s face says it all. They stumbled along the road to Starfall half dead the night before, still broken from the fight with the Kingsguard, and Howland is all kinds of astonished they’re both still alive, and that Arthur Dayne and the rest are dead, especially with all those hits to the head Ned took-

The crannogman thinks that nothing else could ever surprise him again, now that he’s fought against Arthur Dayne, the greatest knight in the Seven Kingdoms, and walked away with all his limbs intact, and the other man dead.

But then he wakes to see Ned sitting hunched over by their makeshift fire, which has all but fizzled out now, and hears him singing ‘ _The Bear and the Maiden Fair_ ’ gruffly and quietly, voice breaking now and again, his hands wrapped around a filthy, wriggling bundle, eyes not moving from it.

Howland had thought nothing could shock him the day before. He thought wrong.       

“Ned?” he asks. For a moment his companion doesn’t react, but when Howland is about to say his name again, Ned turns. He would not be recognisable as Lord Stark to anyone who came across them now - his armor still covered in the blood of the Kingsguard, his hair matted, and bruises mottling his face and forehead, going up into his hairline, angry and purple, face drawn and eyes still puffy and red with grief.

He looks ill.

Ned attempts a smile, but winces before he can finish it. “Ned,” Howland says again, a feeling of uneasiness rising in his chest “What have you got there?”

Ned frowns for a moment, before his face clears “Oh! Howland, it’s wonderful.” He turns his whole body toward the crannogman then, and Howland’s worst fears are confirmed.

“Ned,” Howland says, voice almost failing him “Is that a baby?”

And yes, of course it’s a baby. It can’t be more than a few days old, and it’s pale and small and weak and has its large blue eyes wide open, looking straight up at Ned but not making a sound. It’s tiny feet poke out the bottom of the inexpert swaddling, ten little toes with ten littler toe nails, and it kicks weakly.

“It’s my son.” Ned says, smiling down at the bundle happily.

Howland swallows “Where... Ned, where did your- your son come from?”

Ned points to the side of the dusty road “He was waiting for me. He needed me.”

The child had been left to die, Howland realizes. And Ned, Ned who was obviously ill, and sick, and hurting so badly, had seen him and convinced himself the child was his.

“Ned, he’s... he’s not-”

“He’s mine,” Ned says, stroking a finger tenderly down the baby’s face, face full of hope so pure it was painful “Perhaps we can get him a wetnurse at Starfall. His name’s Jon, after Jon Arryn.” Ned frowned for a moment “Lyanna loved the name Jon.” Howland knows then it would be cruel to say anything at that moment. When Ned was better, saner, no longer mourning or in a land he knew nothing of. Then he’d say something, he promised himself.

He never really got around to it, which he decided later was probably for the best.

Howland had always thought that Ned Stark was a sensible man who made good decisions, and perhaps picking that baby up had been one of the best decisions he had ever made, considering what that baby would go on to do, that neither of them could have ever known, on that damned road in Dorne.

(In the end, no one could have said that Jon Snow was not Ned Stark’s son, not even Howland Reed. But the crannogman would be the only one who ever knew how he came to be known as such - a hit to the head, a baby left on the side of a derelict road, and a man who had lost too much family to leave it there.)

**Author's Note:**

> Again, go check out crossingwinter on tumblr, now known as celiatully as the idea is entirely hers! Please go give her a follow, and leave kudos and reviews if you liked it!


End file.
